Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1905 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capital. Special Correspondence to The Democrat: Tbe Keep Commission which conducted the inquiry into the Government Printing Office scandal has continued its work with the other departments with less parade of secrecy than in the Printing Office case and has turned up a state of affairs already that will cause a lot of trouble for all the departments involved. It has been known for a long time that the government was one of the best and easiest things to work when tbe astute salesman came around and the revelations that have already been made show that someone has reaped a harvest in several of the departments over the furnishing of supplies. There has heretofore been not tbe slightest system about the purchase of government supplies such as ink, mucilage and stationery. The result is that a lot of departments were getting tbe same brand of supplies and the prices made to the purchasing agents varied from ten to a hundred per cent. Take ink alone of which all the departments use barrels annually. The highest price was paid by tbe government Printing Office which gave $4.32 per dozen quarts. The lowest price for identically the same ink was made to the Post Office which got it for $1 34 a dozen quarts. Other supplies showed the same wide range of prices. In the case of mucilage the' Agriculture Department went the limit in paying $3 for a dozen quarts. The Post Office was again the lowest priced department, giving $1.65 for its adhesive fluid. The government Printing Office used a home-made mucilage but this could not have been from motives of economy, for it cost 384 cents for the same quality. The item of lead-pencils which are used in millions annually shows the same astonishing range of prices. The qualities vary so much as to make a comparison difficult, but the prices range all the way from seventy two cents to 12| cents per dozen. There are about 150 different grades used but the same pencil will be furnished to various departments under different trade names and the prices will vary to corres[K>nd. The price of blotting paper varies even more than the articles previously named. The War and Navy departments are the most extravagant in this regard. They go as high as $7.74 per dozen reams in sheets of 19 by 24 inches. The Post Office gets its blotters for $4 and the Department of Agriculture pays from $5.33 cents upward, t ft

The matter of pens and writing paper of type-writer and a number of other things showed just as startling variations. The commission did not go into the prices paid at the stationery room at the Capitol. If it had there would have been some interesting revelations, for there the government goes in for high grade stationery, pen knives and many things such hs sachets and reticules which Congressmen are hardly supposed to use. They are all charged up to the government however and come in handy for the wives of congressmen and senators. There is another great source of waste in all the departments too. It is esteemed no crime to steal stationary from the government and there is hardly a government clerk in the city who ever spends a penny for pens, ink, paper, lead-pen-cils and the like for home use or for his children at school. Some of the users of this sort of stolen goods have the grace to cut off the names of their department from tbe letter heads before they are dedicated to private use, but there are a remarkable lot of school exercises, compositions and examination papers that are turned in to the school teachers here with Department of the Interior, War Department and Department of Agriculture and Geological Survey still on them and the very exercises themselves are written with government pencils and corrected with government erasers. Washington is a nice town to live in a great many respects if you work for the government. t ft It is suggested that hereafter there shall be a central purchasing bureau that will deal in stationary and like supplies for all tbe departments. It is claimed that this will cheapen the cost of material to tbe government. But it will probably work the other way. In the first place it will add another bureau to the circumlocution office. There will be the purchasing agdnt who will get a good salary but whose salary will be nothing in comparison to tbe

amount of graft that will be at his disposal. There will be the additional machinery for distributing the supplies to the various departments and in addition to all that there will be an instant combination of interests outside the department that will force the government to pay the highest possible price for all supplies and if necessary will pool the result of the contracts to prevent cut-throat bidding by firms outside the combination. It is very hard to beat the private firm that is out to “do” the government and it is not likely that the Keep Commission will devise a way of doing it. t t t The commission is not yet through with the purchasing system of the departments and there may be still more startling revelations before they get through. It is understood that they will next take a fall out of the Civil Service Commission.